The winners of the award help make government more efficient, effective and responsible. They also deploy technology where it will have the most impact for residents.

Security and transparency

Cape Coral was first in the 125,000-249,000-population range after prioritizing security and transparency.

Director of IT and CIO Michelle Hoffmann, says she brought in more staff dedicated to security and implemented a new security information and event management system.

“With them in place we were able to concentrate on bringing in a lot of new equipment, to get it all configured and automated as much as possible.

“We didn’t want to get the equipment in and then have so much data that we couldn’t process it all.”

The team also made city data significantly more transparent. “We were selected as one of the ‘What Works Cities’ by the Bloomberg organization. As part of that, we put together an open data plan where we now publish 60 or 65 open data sets, from financials to permits to where our trees are and what kind they are. You can see where fire hydrants are and where the weirs are located on the canals.”